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getting error loading bitfountain.io:

Response Error.

Technical description: 502 Bad Gateway - Response Error, a bad response was received from another proxy server or the destination origin server.

Do you worry about people pirating your eBook, or worse yet - infringing your copyright by taking the information in the eBook, and publishing it as their own? It seems that by going with a publishing agency, one would have a lot more legal protection in that regard?

at the same time, yahoo's design influenced google. google used to have an exclamation point in its logo, just like yahoo.

I used to have a folding bike made by Kama. Can't say it was very convenient. To get it inside an elevator, it took more time to fold it, than for the other kids to fit their regular bikes in. And the small wheels made the speed a lot slower.

this may be true. I lost my wallet today, and a very honest man found it and returned it to me. The wallet contained a large sum of money.

I feel monkey island was the most captivating out of all those type of games (except maybe leisure suit larry?)

Daniel,

Did you guys have the name twitvid registered as a trademark?

If I remember right, based on his presentation at Stanford Enterpreneur Corner, Hoffman was about to go sell jumbo juice after college, not thinking about SocialNet...

maybe one of the designers / programmers of twitvid.io is selling source code to twitvid.com on the side... :)

Of course there is no single magic pill, but I'll try anyway. :)

Google - PageRank. Google was not the first with the product anyway, there were many other search engines in play already at the time - AltaVista, Excite, AskJeeves... Google's infrastructure is not easy to replicate, by the time others caught on to PageRank, Google was already growing exponentially, past the "start-up" phase. By the time others replicated the functionality, Google was a house-hold name.

Twitter - SMS, simple interface, API, brand. Would you rather tweet, or send jaiku's?

YouTube - progressive Flash download, reply features, similar videos actually worked compared to other sites.

Facebook - clean, organized interface, college accounts validation.

One point to mention though, none of these sites had direct knock-offs, icon for icon, like the twitvids. Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.. had all grown in popularity before they were knocked off. Or at least that seems to be the case, unless there were knock-offs that simply were not nearly the same caliber and just never made it past grandpa's blog as far as spreading use. What I am talking about are early-early stages of a start-up, like the twitvids. And looks like they have similar caliber potential judging by their features currently offered.

P.S. If you want to see a nice Facebook knock-off, take a look at vkontakte.ru. THE most popular site among the Russian internet users. Probably the only thing it's missing is the API, and the fact that it found it's niche with the Russian language.

There is something to be said about knock-offs, and that is why there is reason to be concerned about it. When listening to presentations of enterpreneurs from successful start-ups like Facebook and LinkedIn, they will often talk about "what keeps them up at night."

It is most likely, as these sites were probably not built in a matter of days. The concern is not about that, it is about copyright - about the look and feel, and the name. What is the likelyhood of twitvid.com just happening to design the same exact layout as twitvid.io ?

I agree, competition is somewhat of an after-thought when building a successful company. However I consider the comments "work hard, run faster" to be general knowledge, something that every blogger will tell you, what you'll hear at a start-up seminar. What I am interested in, and the reason d'etre of my post, is to hopefully read actual, real-life stories from the users of HN. I am sure there has to be at least a few interesting stories based on personal experience, considering most people here are hard-working indivuduals, driven to see their business succeed, not just write a few lines of code.

What I mean by start-up, is its literal definition - a business starting out, with very limited resources, small market share, no brand recognition. Nike and Adidas are already established brands / companies. I am assuming though, that they had similar woes when they first started out - its natural to have competition and to differentiate yourself and your brand from it.

What I would like to see, is a discussion along the lines of "Nike used special stitching in their shoes, and Adidas didn't, because they didn't feel it was important. The stitching caused the shoes to gain popularity." Preferrably for internet-related start-ups, not shoes. :)

related threads to this discussion

picked up by venturebeat: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=638769

I started a separate thread for discussing barriers to entry here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=638892

I doubt it took them just a few days, considering they have an API, flash plugins, design elements, etc..

I am not an IP lawyer, but seems like copyright infringement to me. Starting with the name. I don't think it matters if twitvid.io is not a .com - if they are providing services under the twitvid mark, they own it. The design elements might be web 2.0/twitterish, but the placement on the screen and wording screams knock-off. It is twitvid.com who should change the name, if .io guys were indeed to market first. It will be interesting to see if the .io guys take this to court.

Having said that, I agree with the comments about making sure to grab a .com. If anything, to avoid a situation like this. Does anyone know, did del.icio.us buy delicious.com right away, or after they became popular and got some cash in their pockets?

the domain twitvid.com was created earlier but may have been bought from the original owner just recently.

Owen,

It would be very educational to hear you go into the details of the liquidation deal that you would prefer and recommend to people joining a new startup. Or, if you could recommend some reading material on the subject?

I meant using the cocoa api in this setup. anyone?

Apple did not learn its lesson - it still has a closed platform. One could argue that the main reason it got overtaken in personal computing is because Windows 3.1 made it so easy for 3rd party developers, and did not impose any restrictions. Same thing happening now -> Apple restricting its developers, preventing core access to the OS, censoring apps, etc.. Prime time for Windows Mobile to eat Apple's lunch.

Has anyone been successful in running Cocoa via this setup?

interesting, no one commented so far about the disproportion of men to women in the field... I think this should be a separate question in itself.

terminate-and-stay resident (TSR) capability for third-party apps built into the sdk would be a nice addition. how do you guys work around this now?

is anyone using omniture?

The reason I posted this to HN, is because I am curious as to how many people here hack at their own body language, and whether you tend to focus on "improving" it, or just let it be "natural", whatever that means. And if you are "improving" it, what are your considerations for particular situations? Do you try act as if you are from a lower SES, to try to level yourself with your listener, or the other way around - try to increase the perceived importance of your SES in order to put down your listener?

I often found meditation easy to transition into after yoga. If you don't feel like going to a pure meditation course, try a yoga class at your local gym, and ask the instructor if they allocate any time toward meditation.

This question reminds me of Howard Rourke's (Fountainhead)advice to Peter Keating when Peter is presented with a similar choice after graduating from Stanton. Rourke ranks them as 1.startup 2.corp 3.continued study

could you please post the link to the digg article?

While I love Visual Studio, I have to say that Flex Builder 3 is very nice, just as nice as VS in my opinion. What do you like more about VS that Flex Builder 3 lacking?

Looks like everyone spins it as they like it! I'd like to see someone release some hard numbers and apples-to-apples comparisons

what a paradox, compared with the 'amazon - best season ever' article...